


Real Princesses

by Morbane



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Relationships, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Crack, Feminist Themes, Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly crack!fic in which the princesses, post-fairy-tale, mix and mingle and sort out their lives.  Slight hating on Rapunzel (who is actually a favourite fairy tale character, but in this version she's a little bit of a mess).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real Princesses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calenlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/gifts).



Cendrillon still visits Rapunzel, but she feels as though they don't really have a lot in common. Rapunzel and Briar Rose get along as well as ever; they talk about mothers and witches and victim complexes. Rapunzel uses everyone for therapy. She tried this on Cendrillon but didn't get very far; Cendrillon feels that this is the job of the excellent psychiatrist Rapunzel's mother-in-law hired to help Rapunzel settle in. Cendrillon has met the man. He seems pleasant and astute. She likes Rapunzel's mother-in-law too, and has graduated to calling her Belle.

It's not quite that she thinks Rapunzel loses her head when all about her are keeping theirs in place. Rapunzel has a story, they all do, and Rapunzel's story involves parents who gave her away for nothing when she'd barely come into the world, and a foster mother who locked her into a tower and used her growing hair as a rope. For most of her life, all Rapunzel has owned is this story, and rage. So Rapunzel tells this story — it's her way of relating to people — and gets the natural reaction from her listener: pity, or a horror shared from the listener's own experience. Cendrillon gives her neither. This alienates Rapunzel.

Cendrillon is very careful about the way she tells her story. “Why did you pick me?” she asks Charming, coaching him. “What do you remember about what you first saw?”

“You were beautiful,” says Charming, “and you entered alone in the middle of a hush, and you were wearing the strangest shoes I'd ever seen.”

“You remember,” Cendrillon tells him, “the way I knew how to dance.”

“True,” says Charming.

“I was a poor step-sister, the family drudge,” says Cendrillon. She is just pointing out the facts. “I was never going to meet a nobleman, or even a merchant with some prospects. I didn't care. I eavesdropped to learn fancy conversation. I hid in the backs of halls to learn how to dance. I learned how to move as if I still had the fortune I was born with.” She looks at Charming firmly. “When you saw me, you saw brains, not just beauty,” and Charming smiles, and concedes the point.

Cendrillon remembers wondering what the life of a princess would be like. She remembers Charming's expression when he came to the house to fetch her. There was the trying on of the shoes, the denouncement of the family, the triumphal return. In front of her step-family, Charming said very little to her, but she knew he'd noticed her bed in the broken fireplace, and the pitiful belongings she gathered up. Finally, in the carriage, he said, “Being a princess is hard work too.” Until then, Cendrillon had merely congratulated herself on advancing her station, and escaping her sisters. That, perhaps, was the moment she fell in love with him. She discovered that she didn't want a life of leisure. But she did want love as a reward for her service.

She has suggested to Briar Rose and Rapunzel that they turn their mutually enabling dependency friendship into something more creative, such as a choir — they are incredible singers. Or perhaps some sort of girl band. Privately she would like to see their gross domestic product expand beyond gossip and tears.

Harsh? Yes — Cendrillon's step-mother taught Cendrillon her sharp tongue, as well as the drive to work hard. So often she bites her tongue, and no one has to know when she's being cruel. They may exasperate her, the princesses with Issues in capital I, but they're not beyond hope. And she does enjoy it when Briar and Rapunzel sing.

*

Tonight Rapunzel is throwing a midsummer ball. Cendrillon is there, invited to provide reassurance to the less experienced host. Somehow she has become an acknowledged expert on parties. The greatest draw for her is the other woman invited to fill this role.

When she became a princess, Cendrillon expected to find herself mingling with a different breed of people. Realistically, she had known they would be as fallible and eccentric as anyone else: case in point, Rapunzel, or Gerda, or Eilinn, the girl whose brothers were swans. But then there's Lina. The youngest “Dancing Princess” is pure delight, a girl of wild civility who knows her dancing shoes.

When Cendrillon is catching up with Briar, Lina is at the punch bowl; when she is asking after Snow's health, Lina and Michael have persuaded a musician to play a dance just for them; when Cendrillon puts aside the “duties” part of social duties, she tracks Lina down by Belle, who has seated herself on the announcer's dais at the front of the hall where she can keep an eye on her daughter in law. As usual, the wives of the Beast and the gardener are discussing roses.

Belle breaks off the conversation to smile at Cendrillon. “Come sit with us,” she says. “And when he's free I must introduce you to my younger son Fabien.”

Cendrillon tries to remember why they haven't met before, and the queen fills the gap. “Fabien has been travelling for the last year,” she explains, “inspired by his brother's example. It is a source of great annoyance to him that he has not come home with a princess.”

Cendrillon raises her eyebrows, both at the snobbery and at the result. “Was there a shortage?” she inquires. Witches are everywhere. Even in her own small kingdom, there are pockets of forest where you don't go, houses and gardens you walk by with eyes averted, like the spots in front of one's eyes imposed on the land. Princes rescue princesses from witches, and the princes and princesses offend more witches, who kidnap their children — well, that's the worst case scenario. Sometimes it's a little more indirect than that, but the cycle is ingrained and vicious. Learned patterns and rituals playing out in the lifetimes of kingdoms.

“He's a little picky,” says Belle dryly.

Everyone has arrived who was invited, and as if someone's fairy was only holding it off until now, summer rain gushes down outside Belle and the Beast's great hall. The first formal dance begins, but Belle and Lina and Cendrillon put off dancing to talk a little longer. When Lina gets going, she's the heart of the dance floor and the last to leave; she need not hurry to seek partners.

Because they are the only ones left on the announcer's dais, they hear the knocking.

Two quick raps — a pause — two quick raps again, and then, before Belle can summon a guard to open the door with her, it is pushed firmly open, and a young woman, entirely drenched, stands in the entrance.

“Hello!” she says. “I am so sorry. Would it be a terrible imposition for you to put me up for the night? You looked as though perhaps you would have room.” She looks very cold but also exhilarated.

“Who are you, dear?” asks Belle, sending the guard she summoned to open the door off to fetch a towel.

“I am Princess Ofelia,” she says. “Except you probably won't have heard of my kingdom because it got enchanted over two hundred years ago and ever since I broke the curse I've been travelling.”

She is wearing an admittedly pretty yellow dress, over practical but un-princessy leggings, under a thick coat and — an offense to the genteel — a very rough-looking knapsack. Her dark, curly hair is straggling down from a complicated arrangement on top of her head.

This has attracted most of the dancers; the musicians falter, and continue playing half-heartedly. “What's this?” asks a young man whom Cendrillon realises must be Fabien. Rapunzel is behind him, just as curious. “Her highness, Ofelia, has arrived,” Lina tells them, eyes bright.

“Did you say you broke a curse on your own kingdom?” Rapunzel asks, her voice heavy with suspicion. Right. In Rapunzel's mind, princesses don't rescue themselves. Fabien looks at her uncertainly, then back to Ofelia. It's clear that he likes the newcomer as much as Lina does.

Lina cuts her off before she can ask the next dreadful question. “You seem surprised,” she says soothingly to Rapunzel, “but I can tell you that Ofelia is clearly a princess.” Rapunzel sputters. Fabien is listening.

The guard appears with a blanket. Lina waves him back. “No, that's much too rough for Ofelia's skin.”

Ofelia, who Cendrillon is beginning to like more and more, can clearly recognise a straight line when she hears it. “It's all right,” she says earnestly. “After some time on the road my royal skin is not quite as sensitive as it was. It will cause me discomfort, perhaps marks, but I do not wish to catch my death of cold.”

“Very well,” says Lina, in a tone of great concern. By now the musicians have given up on the Valse des Fleurs. “But we should put you to bed immediately. Belle, straw mattresses just won't do. Don't you have more feather mattresses in the upper levels?”

“I do,” says Belle.

Rapunzel is a commoner's daughter; Belle and Cendrillon came from merchant families; Snow White was simply a strange child. Lina, royal daughter of France, is what they all think of when they think princess, and just like now, she usually milks it for all it's worth. Briar Rose could probably contradict her, but Briar Rose is in the back of the hall, staring at Lina, just as enthralled as the rest.

“First we will find Ofelia a place to rest,” says Lina, “and we can _interview_ her in the morning,” with a stern look that implies that this is castle business, not any guest's affair; and a voice loud enough to carry to the end of the hall.

“What are you playing at?” Cendrillon asks her softly, as a procession of Belle and Ofelia, Lina and Cendrillon, guards and maids, marches up the stairs to the rooms where the better mattresses are kept, and the musicians start up again in the hall.

“The old pea in the mattress trick,” Lina says happily. “My sisters and I used to use it to explain why we never got any sleep. _Oh, we're black and blue, there must have been a seed or_ something _in the bedding, you know what delicate creatures we are, Papa!_ I'll say I put it there, and Belle will back me up, and we'll let this girl Ofelia in on it, because I have no idea what she'll get up to if we let her improvise.”

“Why are you doing all this?”

“Well, didn't you see Fabien's face? Idiot boy, he trots all over a dozen kingdoms looking for a girl, and one shows up and finds him. Let's give him a chance, anyway. And we can't do that without shaking up Rapunzel a little bit.” Lina pauses, and continues more quietly, “and I _like_ her. Why shouldn't she get to be a princess?”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you don't mind that this involves a lot of Cinderella; I tried otherwise to fulfil the request. Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to follow this particular bunny.


End file.
